Bomb scare puts airport on high alert for hours

Published 4:00 am, Friday, February 11, 2000

For a couple hours it looked as if Alaska Airlines had another big problem on its hands: a pipe bomb found near the airline's boarding gate at San Jose International Airport.

But by the end of the day Thursday, there was no explosive, no problems with planes and no injuries - just a very red-faced employee.

"There was no bomb," said airport spokesman Rich Dressler after it was all over. "The purported pipe bomb turned out to be an Alaska Airlines (security) testing device."

The device, a piece of metal pipe about 8-12 inches long and strongly resembling a pipe bomb, sent the airport into high alert for more than two hours Thursday after a San Jose police officer spotted it next to a door leading from the terminal to the airfield.

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More than 200 people in the terminal were evacuated, three gates were closed. Some outgoing Alaska flights were delayed for about a half hour as passengers were directed to the other gates. Arriving flights were not delayed, but directed to other gates.

The police bomb squad and an FBI anti-terrorist team moved in, Dressler said, and quickly determined that the "bomb" was a piece of pipe and nothing more.

But investigators wondered how it got into the terminal. Airport x-ray machines are supposed to prevent big pieces of metal that look like bombs or weapons from getting that far, unless an employee testing security checkpoints brings it in.

That's, in fact, what happened.

An Alaska Airlines ground security employee had tried to take the pipe through a checkpoint in a piece of luggage earlier in the day. He was complying with federal regulations requiring such routine security tests at points passengers use on the way to flights.

The employee was unsuccessful, meaning the airlines' security people noticed the pipe and stopped

him, an Alaska Airlines spokesperson said.

But instead of returning the pipe to a locked drawer in Alaska's back shop, the employee asked a colleague to take care of it.

That employee apparently forgot to put the pipe away, instead leaving it resting near a door where passengers board planes and exit incoming flights.

"I don't know what went through their mind," said Susan Pohle, spokeswoman for Alaska Airlines in San Jose. "For whatever reason the person left this device within open view."

Pohle conceded that the incident was "embarrassing" but added that the airline was happy that the whole affair was not more serious.

Thursday's incident was just the latest piece of bad news for Alaska Airlines. Last week a flight on the way to San Francisco

crashed into the Pacific Ocean near the Ventura County coast, killing all 88 people aboard. Then on Thursday, the airlines announced it found problems in the tail sections of two MD-80 jets - related to the model that crashed - and is grounding the planes.

The repercussions of the San Jose incident are much smaller. The airline will review its ground security procedures, and at least one employee had a lot of explaining to do.

Pohle said the employee was "very embarrassed" and "had to tell the story many, many times today, to the police, the FBI, to supervisors" and corporate affairs folks from company headquarters in Seattle.

Pohle would not reveal any information about the employee or what discipline that person could face. &lt;